Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Music Pounding In My Head: OOZEPUS

Indecipherable words are gargled over chugging bottom end bass riffs and ten-ton drums and I'm taken back to the days when Godflesh, Swans and The Jesus Lizard were crafting loud and abrasive anthems for malcontents designed to strike fear into the hearts of Babyboomer parents, a generation in love with its own tired, pop-laden runoff and convinced of its progeny's inferiority. OOZEPUS, a supergroup of sorts comprised of members from Coffins and Linekraft, provide the type of aural pummeling you yearn for if you grew up hearing sounds both muddy and grinding, their new EP, Your Limit, a four-song ode to the mechanics behind grotesque, huge and heavy music.

As rattling as an intro as you could hope to hear from a band like this, the title track plays like some fucked up march that leads into a slow skip. OOZEPUS maintain a necessary trudge and assembly line repetition throughout most of Your Limit, a mouthful of viscous fluid spewed across every track. For "Insult," a wailing guitar melody pierces through the track's industrial crawl. It's probably the album's most humanizing moment, that expressive tone trailing across the ugliness beneath.

Truly the only speed OOZEPUS manage is via "CYN," its pace burdened by the music's weight. With surges of guitar sound coursing though its rhythmic upswing, "CYN" cuts a carnage-riddled path to "Farmers," a fractured, doom-laden near-9 minutes that, at points, seems to recall Greg Ginn's numerous attempts at Iommi'izing Black Flag. The track eventually shifts into multiple fits of percussive turbulence until the song ends.